Georges-Posthume Lebon

Georges-Posthume Lebon (23 July 1746-22 April 1794) was a General of the French Republic's French Revolutionary Army during the French Revolutionary Wars.

Biography
Georges-Posthume Lebon was born on 23 July 1746 in Caen, Normandie, in the Kingdom of France to a family of bourgeois Frenchmen. Lebon's father was a cartographer and mariner, and his mother worked at a textile factory. He grew up in a middle-class family, and he purchased a commission in the French Army in 1759 at the age of 13. In 1763 he was posted to the front lines of the Seven Years' War in Alsace-Lorraine, but returned home after a few months due to the war's end with the Treaty of Paris. Lebon was a Sergeant by the end of the conflict, and served in garrison duties in eastern France up until 1774. That year, he decided to pursue a career in medicine at the age of 28, and he was in attendance at the University of Orleans from 1774 to 1778. Lebon rejoined the military at the start of the American Revolutionary War and took command of a company of French militia in northern France, defending the shore from Great Britain's Royal Navy if an invasion took place. It never did, but Lebon was given the rank of Major in 1783 for his long years of service to the French crown.

After the French Revolution, Lebon rose in the ranks rapidly. For putting down royalist unrest in Alsace in 1793, he was awarded a medal and the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of a regiment of Normandy Volunteers. Lebon led this regiment at the Battle of Neerwinden, where his regiment took part in some of the most ferocious fighting of the French Revolutionary Wars against the Austrian Empire. His regiment was routed, but his head was saved from the guillotine after focus was put on the general Charles-Francois Dumouriez, who defected to the Austrians.

In August 1793, Lebon was promoted to General and was placed in command of the newly-formed Army of the Moselle, a 17,000-strong formation that was centered around the city of Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine. His army was made up of National Guard troops as well as a few trained troops, some cavalry, and some artillery, and on 10 December 1793 they defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Sorbey. This victory was a major one, throwing the Austrians back over the Rhine. However, an attempted invasion of Bavaria was defeated and Lebon was accused of inadequate command. Lebon was executed by guillotine on 22 April 1794 in Le Grand Chatelet in Paris.